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For any of you who might be inclined to try one of these kits, I recommend them highly, but realize that they involve a LOT of fine soldering work. Every resistor, capacitor, diode, transistor, etc. that you see on that green PCB had to be soldered into place, as well as every wire. The board is set up nicely with small metal eyelets for every solder point. The toughest part is the very small size of the space you have to work with. I just took my time and double checked every solder joint that I did, and everything worked out fine. But be forewarned--THIS IS NOT A GOOD PROJECT FOR LEARNING TO SOLDER!!
In addition to giving you two slightly different IC chips, they also give you (1) two different kinds of diodes so, that you can alter the stock symmetrical clipping mode to different degrees of assymetrical clipping, and (2) two different capacitors for one of the board's cap positions, which alter the tone. The stock cap (0.047 uf) gives a midrange "hump" that is apparently characteristic of the original TS-808, and the second (0.22 uf) flattens out the frequency response some and gives significantly stronger bass.
The difference between the two IC's is quite subtle, to my ears, with the stock chip being a bit sharper in its tone than the "hi-fi" chip that's also included. The stock chip has a little more aggressive edge to it that I prefer.
I went with the most assymetrical clipping that I could get from the two types of diodes provided, after reading that the assymetric clipping was (a) more tube-like in character, and (b) SRV preferred it! Reading through the BYOC forum, the most common mods of the TS-808 clone involve mounting different types of diodes (including yellow LED's!) on a small piece of perfboard (available at Radio Shack) and wiring them up to a 3-position DPDT toggle switch, allowing you to switch between clipping modes. I may try that at some point, but I'm happy with the sound I've got for now.
I initially installed the larger cap for the stronger bass response (that's what you hear in the first clips I posted), but I decided after playing through it for a couple of hours that it was too bassy/boomy, so I switched to the smaller stock cap today. Much stronger midrange! And since the guitar is basically a midrange instrument (at least it is, the way I like to hear it!), I think it sounds much better. The big cap definitely tended toward muddiness on chords down at the end of the neck. A cap of a rating in between the two (like 0.10 uf) would be interesting to try; might give a nice compromise between the two extremes. I may very well try that.
Posted below is a link to a clip I recorded to show the difference between the two IC's (listen carefully!) and between the two caps (very obvious). These are recorded with my Epi Dot on the bridge p'up through my Vox AD30VT, using the Tweed 4x10 model and some reverb. The same riffs are repeated four times. The sequence of hardware is:
Reading through the BYOC forum, the most common mods of the TS-808 clone involve mounting different types of diodes (including yellow LED's!) on a small piece of perfboard (available at Radio Shack) and wiring them up to a 3-position DPDT toggle switch, allowing you to switch between clipping modes. I may try that at some point, but I'm happy with the sound I've got for now.
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